Nicholas Vitanza, MD is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a pediatric neuro-oncologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He directs the Vitanza Lab at Seattle Research Institute’s Ben Town Center for Childhood Cancer Research and he serves as Seattle Children’s CNS CAR T cell Lead and DIPG Research Lead. Dr. Vitanza completed his pediatric oncology fellowship under the mentorship of Drs. Bill Carroll and Elizabeth Raetz at NYU before completing a neuro-oncology fellowship under the mentorship of Dr. Michelle Monje at Stanford. In the Monje Lab his post-doctoral work focused on combinatorial targeted therapy for DIPG was published in Science Translational Medicine and Cancer Cell. In 2016, he joined Seattle Children’s where he has written and directed 3 CNS CAR T cell trials that have delivered over 260 intracranial CAR T cell doses to children with recurrent CNS tumors and DIPG – with preliminary findings published in Nature Medicine. Through his collaborative laboratory and clinical research programs, Dr. Vitanza aims to optimize epigenetic and immunotherapeutic targeting of pediatric CNS tumors with a goal to rapidly translate findings to the clinic and improve the lives of affected children.